Bookstore Offers Textbook Rentals

Here's an idea being implemented by the University Of Virgina, an institution created by a multi-talented patriot and great U.S. president, Thomas Jefferson: the bookstore will be renting textbooks. Story from C-Ville, the Charlottesville, VA weekly that informs us that only 2% of institutions of higher learning are going ahead with the textbook rental concept.

What do the textbook publishers think of this profit-squashing paradigm? According to Stacy Skelly, assistant director of higher education at the Association of American Publishers, they're not shaking in their loafers. Skelly, who represents some of the biggest publishers of college textbooks, says that rental programs are growing at such a small uptick that they're not a significant worry for the likes of Thompson, Houghton-Mifflin or Pearson.